Citizen Welles [Illustrated] [Board book]

Brady (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brady's quiet but unrelenting passion for his subject pulsates beneath his variegated and vastly human portrait of stage, radio and film genius Orson Welles. In addition to vivid behind-the-scenes accounts of such acknowledged Welles landmarks as his innovative Mercury Theatre productions, the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast and film masterpieces Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons , Brady, biographer of Streisand, Hugh Hefner et al., unsparingly chronicles Welles's professional descent in a commercially oriented Hollywood that consistently turned a blind eye to the iconoclastic artist in its midst. Ironically, like his most enduring character, Charles Foster Kane, whom he once described as "fighting a losing battle with the twentieth century," Welles, in Brady's candid depiction, ends up a somewhat embittered, bewildered victim of the same fate. Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Welles personified the cliche "bigger than life." His overwhelming persona and unfulfilled promise have been much written about, but little has been revealed about the man. Welles said he did not want an accurate description of himself but a flattering one, and he was not above embroidering the truth. Despite exhaustive research, this long and densely detailed biography, with its lengthy re-created conversations and minutiae, does not really succeed in finding the man beneath the legend. It is, however, quite readable despite Brady's tendency to pun and deserves a place beside Barbara Leaming's authorized biography, Orson Welles (Viking, 1985). It is superior to Charles Higham's somewhat superficial Orson Welles (LJ 12/1/85).
- Roy Liebman, California State Univ. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Board book: 576 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; illustrated edition edition (April 28, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684189828
• ISBN-13: 978-0684189826
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,807,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Frank Brady is an acclaimed author of several biographies, including that of Orson Welles, Aristotle Onassis, Barbra Streisand and his most recent biography: ENDGAME: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall -- from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness. A New York Times bestseller, ENDGAME is being published in countries around the world, and is available as an e-book and an audiobook.
Frank Brady first met Bobby Fischer when the young prodigy was a child and Brady was a teen, and he went on as a journalist to cover Fischer's life as the boy from Brooklyn rose to become the first American to win the World Chess Championship.
Brady is a full professor of communications at St. John's University, and the president of the Marshall Chess Club,the most prestigous chess club in the country. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Maxine, a writer and editor.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brady's bio a lively yet academic examination of Welles, May 24, 1999

By 

[e-mail], Nick Sambides Jr. (Middletown, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Citizen Welles (Board book)

Frank Brady's "Citizen Welles" is one of the most well-respected biographies of Welles, and still one of the most underrated. Let me explain. Brady's book actually qualifies as a very early examination of Welles' life, beating Bogdanovich's "This is Orson Welles" and Simon Callow's "Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu" onto the shelves by many years. It perhaps is not thought of as an early work because its publication was delayed several years due to trouble Brady's publishers had, not him. If it had been released when Brady first completed it, it probably would have earned much more acclaim than it already has. Brady anticipates much of the interest surrounding Welles and answers many key questions surrounding the man. He also thoroughly examines many areas of the famous man's life previously ignored by Welles historians, including Welles' abortive South American trip, which damaged Welles in Hollywood far more than "The Magnificent Ambersons" trauma or the battle Welles had to fight to get "Citizen Kane" released. Brady also avoids the awful bias of earlier works by Houseman and Kael that so macerated Welles, telling the man's story with frankness and understanding. It should be the first book anyone reads about Welles, and the book referred to by anyone reading any other work on the mythic director. With movies on Welles in production for HBO and the big screen (Tim Robbins' "The Cradle Will Rock"), interest in Welles only increases with time. That makes Brady's exhaustively-researched and smoothly-written book a keeper.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-researched, objective account of a fascinating artist, May 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Citizen Welles (Board book)

Frank Brady's biography dismantles the endless rumors and fabrications surrounding the life of Orson Welles. It is different from most of the other biographies on Welles in that it relies very heavily on research. Other biographies seem to subjective, and pay too much attention to the lies Welles sometimes told about himself. Ladies and gentleman, if you're into Welles, this is the one. A class 'A' "Mercury Theatre" production.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Citizen Welles is a Fine Biography, August 29, 2003

By 

C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles (Paperback)

Frank Brady is a professor who knows how to write interesting prose about the fascinating figure of Orson Welles. Welles was a prodigy as a child who reach the heights of film glory with Citizen Kane! Brady points out that Welles excelled in radio, television, the movies and on the legitimate stage.
Welles was a man of Falstaffian stature whose appetites were
gargantuan whether it be wine, women, song and brilliant productions of his creative mind.
This book is not a candidate for the E True Hollywood Story or the National Enquirer! Brady provides a detailed account of the reason Welles will be remembered-his work in popular culture
for several decades.
Anyone wishing to know more about Welles, media in America or the difficulty of being a genius maverick in Hollwood will derive profit from this excellent biography. Highly Recommended!